Major airline carriers are continuing their ongoing efforts to gain back control over their own distribution channels. One of the recent problems airline carriers are facing is the practice of screen scraping, which means as much as downloading or extracting fares and flight schedules from a global distribution system for use on another technological platform. Where screen scraping is leading to additional traffic and sales, it is also becoming a problem for both airlines and hospitality industry.

Ryanair is one of the first carriers that is no longer accepting bookings through screen scrapers, and has announced that as of per August 11, the airline will cancel all bookings made through these channels. This measurement could lead up to 1000 Ryanair passengers finding themselves stranded, as a result of the aggressive new policy of the Airline.
The announcement of Ryanair is made at the same time the company is involved in several legal  conflicts with other companies over the issue. “Many of these screen scrapers charge consumers a handling fee for their non existent service of showing them our lowest prices, fail to provide passengers with the proper terms and conditions of our services and do not pass on our email messages about flight changes, delays or policy changes” states a spokesperson for Ryanair while dealing with issues regarding screen scraping.

Customers are actually under the impression of having booked a flight at Ryanair, while they have never visited the actual website of the budget carrier and are subject to additional booking fees. According to Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary the company is free to cancel any booking, and they will continue their efforts to create as much chaos as possible for screen scrapers. Ryanair’s terms and conditions forbid commercial use of information from its website, and it counts screen scraping as commercial use.

So what impact could have Ryanair’s decision have on meta search engine and price comparison websites? Travelsupermarket, one of Europe’s leading meta search engines, has already released a statement on Ryanair’s decision; “We do not take the booking, instead we direct the customer through to the partners’ website where they will only pay the price displayed by the airline, tour operator or other travel provider,” according to Travelsupermarket’s product development manager Bob Atkinson. Ryanair will be hoping to gain more traffic and revenues through their direct distribution channels, trying to outplay any third parties and meta search engines.

From a supplier’s point of view it is understandable that they are trying to avoid having to pay additional costs and favoring their direct channels, I am doubting however whether just ‘canceling’ any bookings coming in through these channels is going to solve the issue. I hope that a next possible step will include direct suppliers taking an example and start thinking of a solution of their own; publishing rates, schedules and availability to customers in a way which can compete with current popular meta search engines.

Still not quite sure whether the decision by Ryanair is good or bad, at least it is interesting to see that suppliers are considering their position in the whole distribution process. It will be interesting to see if more suppliers are following and whether they can oppose a threat to popular search engines.

related items

• Ryanair’s approach against screen scrapers appears to be effective
• Ryanair signs partnership with priceline’s booking.com
• Ryanair terminates Expedia exclusive agreement

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